In case you haven’t already heard, there are some changes in store for the new season of New Girl (which premieres tonight at 8 p.m.): Jess will lose her job, Schmidt will lose his cast (and gain an exciting new mission in life), Nick will contemplate publishing a zombie book (see below), and Winston…well, he’ll actually be on the right track. We spoke to exec producer Liz Meriwether to get the scoop on what’s coming up for each character this season.

Jess
According to Meriwether, getting fired sends Jess into “kind of a tailspin.” But it won’t last long. “She decides that she’s spent her entire life working and instead of looking at unemployment as a bad thing, she is going to do some things that she has never gotten a chance to do because she’s been working all the time.” That includes juggling some new men in her life, like guest-star David Walton, who will play a “classic bad boy type.” As for what that means for Nick and Jess fans, Meriwether will only say that “there’s been a lot of conversations” about the two characters and that fans could “expect some developments.”

Nick
Speaking of Nick, he’s back and totally Caroline-free. “He’s still sort of his usual angry self,” says Meriwether. “This year we’re kind of trying to define what makes him angry a little bit more and let him kind of go off on some rants on some different things.” He’s also going to start thinking about what he wants to do with his life. “He has this half-written book about zombies and I think he’s going to kind of at some point decide what he wants to do with that book,” says Meriwether, who adds, “That’s a real thing.” Oh, we bet.

Schmidt
It’s been a long summer without our favorite douchebag, but he returns in fine form tonight. With his cast finally off, Schmidt decides to throw a grand re-branding party (there will be a theme and fire). There, he runs into CeCe…or should we say, his ex-girlfriend, CeCe? “They are not together,” says Meriwether, who explains that CeCe is now dating someone else. “I think that what happened in the desert, in the finale, was sort of a kind of vague, rough, half break-up.” Not that it matters anyway, Meriwether says Schmidt will be busy this season pursuing a new goal aka meeting Kanye West. “He kind of sets out over the course of the season to hangout with Kanye,” she says. In other words, he’s not in a “dating frame of mind,” though Meriwether says we can definitely “expect some weird sex.” (Maybe with his new boss?). Let’s just hope it doesn’t land him in the hospital again.

Winston: While Jess loses her job, Winston begins to really succeed at his. “Winston’s actually doing pretty well,” explains Meriwether. In fact, he becomes even more determined to do well at work after his mother and sister, a WNBA player, drop by. “[It] kind of pushes him to make some strides at work and to get ahead,” says Meriwether. Not everyone will applaud Winston for his success though. “[Winston is] approaching Schmidt’s level of success, which is annoying for Schmidt.” Naturally.